


Five times Kent documented cat shenanigans on Instagram and one time he didn't

by Khashana



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Cat Fanatic Kent, Instagram, M/M, Negative consequences of coming out, Social Media, mild sexist language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-11 22:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13533708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/Khashana
Summary: The photos all have alt text, so if they're not loading or you are using a screen reader, it should still work. Let me know if it doesn't.I'd like to assure you all that none of this is posed, contrived, or photoshopped.Kent's Instagramtotally exists. Obviously it is run by me, but the photos were taken spontaneously as the moments occurred and the story written around them, not the other way around. There's plenty more to Kent's insta. I once got a DM that said "you're 90% cat blog and 10% hockey" and I was like, that's Exactly the impression I was going for so good!





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The photos all have alt text, so if they're not loading or you are using a screen reader, it should still work. Let me know if it doesn't.
> 
> I'd like to assure you all that none of this is posed, contrived, or photoshopped. [Kent's Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/kentparson90) totally exists. Obviously it is run by me, but the photos were taken spontaneously as the moments occurred and the story written around them, not the other way around. There's plenty more to Kent's insta. I once got a DM that said "you're 90% cat blog and 10% hockey" and I was like, that's Exactly the impression I was going for so good!

“Parser,” said Scraps, “for the love of God get Instagram.”

“Isn’t that one of those new social media things?” asked Kent vaguely.

“It’s starting to catch on,” said Scraps. “Point is, it’s for pictures. You can post all your cat pictures there, and then you won’t have to torment the rest of us with them.”

“Aw, you love my cat pictures,” said Kent, but he was already looking the app up on his phone.

“There comes a point,” said Scraps, taking a deep breath, “when a man has to _draw the line._ ”

“I’ll call her Purrs in public and online, I think,” mused Kent.

“I don’t know, Parser, I think you deserve all the chirping you’ll get for naming your cat Kit Purrson.”

Kent didn’t stop showing pictures to his teammates, but he cut back to only the cutest shots that the others HAD to see. And he had to admit, his teammates looked way less tense when he sat down next to them with a phone in his hand.


	2. Kent buys a cat

“Dude,” said Kent, plopping down next to Swoops. “I’m gonna go check out a cat breeder next week. Wanna come?”

“Why would I wanna come, Parser? Why do you wanna go?”

“I’ve always wanted a Maine Coon. And, to keep me from taking home all of them? To watch me turn into a girl over kittens? To get one of your own? Take your pick.”

“Fine, Parser. I’ll come with. But I’m not getting a cat.”

  
***

“Swoops, c’mon. I won’t even chirp you. It’s too sad,” sighed Kent. Troy was sitting on the floor with a brown kitten and Kent’s new silver one, playing with a feather.

“You know, cats are social animals,” said the breeder. “It would be good for them to visit each other. Do you live close together?”

“Same apartment building,” said Kent, still watching Swoops.


	3. Ozzy and the fish

Kent had to bite his lip very hard the first couple of times Swoops showed up at the door with Ozzy—in one arm those early days.

“She said it would be good for them to visit each other,” muttered Swoops, and set Ozzy down. The cat proceeded to explore the room, and, once satisfied, pounced on Purrs, and the game was afoot.

_You said you wouldn’t chirp him. We don’t want to discourage this,_ Kent told himself over and over as it became their normal. Troy and Ozzy would turn up, Ozzy would run off to play or cuddle with Purrs, and Troy would plop down with Kent and watch tape, or sitcoms, or help make dinner. 

“You can tell me if you don’t want me to come over this much,” Troy said once, staring at the TV in false concentration. “I won’t be offended.”

“Dude, it’s fine,” said Kent. “I like the company.”

The next day, ignoring Purrs’ protests, he picked her up, stuck his key in his pocket, and walked out his front door. He took the elevator down a few flights, though he usually walked, with the logic that it was much better if he lost control of his cat in an elevator than a stairwell. Swoops’ face when he answered the door was a thing of beauty. Neither cat liked to be carried, but Ozzy put up with it better, so it was still usually Troy coming to Kent, but Kent loved the crooked grin he got every time he turned up uninvited. It was somewhat backwards then, that Purrs stopped growing at just a little larger than a regular cat, but Ozzy ended up a full three feet long tail to tip, and spilled over the edges of Swoops’ arms when he was picked up.

  
  


Eventually, tired of having to answer the door at all hours, he had a key made and tossed it at Troy’s face next time he came over.

“Just open the door next time.” Troy smiled slowly, as though he knew just how hard Kent was trying to be nonchalant.

“Okay, Kent. Okay.” He had a key made for Kent that weekend.

It came in handy for roadies. They left both cats at Kent’s so they wouldn’t be lonely, and consolidated to one cat-sitter.

Kent lost his, admirable, he thought, self-control the day Swoops walked in with Ozzy, now fully grown and chewing on his toy fish. 


	4. Fanart

In years to come, Kent would look back on the memory and laugh at his excitement over one person noticing him. But those were early days, and hockey was a niche sport, and Kent still looked through the #kentparson tag on Instagram when he was bored. And one day, he [found his cat.](https://www.instagram.com/p/BZ35x1Pha2E/?hl=en&taken-by=blackhaireddemon)

  
  


True to his word, Kent found a snapback and put it on Purrs. It was, as he had noted, far too big, and so he had to hold it on her while he took the picture. He posted three of them.

  


  
  
  


He figured that was the end of it. But a couple of days later, he got tagged in [a post](https://www.instagram.com/p/BaR5AieBQSA/?hl=en).

  
  


  


Troy made the mistake of barging in just then with Ozzy in his arms. He had to let the cat down quickly in order to catch Kent, who flung himself over in excitement. 

“Swoops! Look at this! You can BUY a print of MY CAT!” He clicked on the [user](https://www.instagram.com/blackhaireddemon/?hl=en), followed the link to the [Etsy shop](https://www.etsy.com/shop/blackhaireddemon), and bought a copy of the [print](https://www.etsy.com/listing/551132542/cat-in-a-snapback-original-woodcut-print?ref=shop_home_active_28). It came just a few days later.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please go check out [@blackhaireddemon](https://www.instagram.com/blackhaireddemon/?hl=en)'s page! I hate reposting her art even with all of the credit and links I'm adding so assuage my conscience.


	5. Dumb cats

Kent will maintain to his dying day that Purrs is smarter than Ozzy. After all, Purrs knows which tool controls the red dot, while one of Kent’s most treasured photos was texted to him by Swoops very early on and saved to his photos. When he got his Instagram account, he dug back through his photo archives, because the internet needed that photo.

  
  
  


Then there was the time Kent tossed a piece of uncooked yam toward the trash and missed, and Ozzy flattened himself to the ground to scuttle after it under the open dishwasher.

  
  
  


  


Or the time he climbed into the pantry.

  


  
  
  
Purrs had her quirks, to be sure. There was the time she squeaked at him from the kitchen until he came in to find her bowl already full, and watched with disbelief as she started happily eating it.

  
  


  
  


But eventually, the day had to come when Kent had no comeback. He was maneuvering a new treadmill into the house, and he had the base slid right where he wanted it, but it was resting on top of its cord. He lifted up one of the long edges just long enough to pull the cord out, and a grey blur whipped by. 

  



	6. Ozzy's tablecloth vs Kit's shoes

Ozzy had Swoops absolutely wrapped around his paw, Kent found out the first time he turned up. 

“He’s easier to brush this way,” argued Swoops in defense of his cat’s position comfortably laid out on the kitchen table. 

Not only was he allowed there, Kent found, but actively encouraged whenever there was room. Troy claimed to like the company and even fed him up there. 

  
  
  
  


It did occasionally come back to bite him in the ass. 

  
  
  
  


Swoops, however, claimed Kent had no room to judge because _his_ cat slept in the shoes, despite the fact it was his own choices Kent was questioning, and not his cat’s. Her favorite place to sit was in the pile of shoes (because Kent never put anything away. Swoops liked to say it looked like thirty people lived there). She looked so much like a hen sitting on a nest that Kent began to call her his shoe hen. 

  


  
  
  
  
  


One day, Kent kissed him to shut him up. It worked.


	7. Leaving

Kent came out after they became official. Not on social media or anything, but to the team and management. He and Jeff had agreed to see how that went before Jeff came out. Kent was the top scorer in the NHL, nobody could say his sexuality had affected his performance on the ice. 

And then, one morning not long after, everything changed.

***

Traded? Kent stared down at his phone in dismay. Traded to the Falcs. A phone call to the GM confirmed it: Apparently, being gay breached his morality clause, and so the no-trade clause meant jack shit. 

He looked over to where Kit and Ozzy were playing together, and then to where Swoops was asleep on the couch, one arm slung over his eyes. He couldn’t. He couldn’t separate them.

So he walked back to his apartment, for the first time without his cat. He booked a flight and packed a suitcase of everything he would need for the short term, and then he packed a box full of all Kit’s things, and he lugged it and Kit’s cat tree out of his apartment and down to Jeff’s. Somewhat to his amazement, Jeff managed to sleep through the not especially quiet process of dragging a cat tree into his living room. Kent stared at him for a long moment and couldn’t bear it to wake him up. So he scribbled a note and left it on the cat tree.

 _Jeff—_  
_I got traded to Providence. Apparently this, you and me, breaches my morality clause. Please don’t hate me for not waking you up. I can’t deal with seeing the sadness on your face._  
_I can’t separate Kit and Ozzy, they’re best friends. And I can’t take Ozzy away from you. Take good care of my baby for me._  
_I love you._  
_Kent_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! Do I leave it there? Do I write the conclusion? Is it a sad conclusion? Is it a ridiculous sappy conclusion where Jeff does something drastic? Leave me a note in the comments.


	8. Following

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The results are clear—everyone is mad at me for making them hurt. :D I’m in the works of a PB&J fic that begins with Parse getting traded to Providence, which is a large part of why I wanted to end it there—Parswoops not being wholly convenient to a PB&J endgame. But that’s a much darker story and doesn’t really deserve to be called a sequel, while this has been a light and fluffy thing until just now, and I’ve decided that it doesn’t really fit the tone of the story to end it there.

Kent flicked his phone off airplane mode as he headed toward baggage claim. It lit up and announced three missed calls, a voicemail, and a text, all from Swoops. The voicemail simply said, “KENT.” and cut off after several seconds of silence. The text was longer.

_It’s only three missed calls because I figured you must be on a plane, you bet your ass if I thought you were ignoring me it’d be more like 26._  
_One part of me is like, You asshole! I didn’t even get a chance to hug you goodbye! Dick move! But the other part of me gets it. I would have had a hard time waking you up if the situation was reversed._  
_Call me. I have no idea how to fix this, just. Call me._

__

Kent looked up and spotted Jack, who hadn’t even bothered to bring a sign, the fucker. Jack stood up from his chair and paced over.

“Call your boyfriend, Parse, he’s freaking out.”

“Hello to you too,” said Kent, glaring at him a little. “Fine, you go hunt my baggage then. It’s Vegas print, you can’t miss it.”

“The hell is Vegas print,” said Jack, but he loped off toward the carousel. Kent took his chair and called Swoops, who picked up on the second ring.

“Did you call Jack?” asked Kent, not really thinking.

“Yes, I called Jack, you were on a plane,” said Jeff, voice rough. “I also called Georgia Martin, your agent, my agent, the GM, Scraps, and my mother.”

Kent bit his lip. “I’m sorry for leaving like that,” he whispered.

“I’m still mad at you, but I love you, so I forgive you.”

“I love you too,” said Kent quietly.

“Yeah, and Kit, more than you love yourself apparently. The fuck are you going to do in a brand new city without your cat.”

“Did any of those people say anything useful?” asked Kent instead of answering the question.

“Georgia says they can’t really accommodate a second trade so quickly, your agent feels responsible—you should call her by the way, and tell her it’s not her fault—my agent says for the love of god don’t come out before he has something approximating a plan or I’m going to end up in Anaheim or some shit since the Falcs can’t take me, Jack has nothing useful to offer but is a surprisingly sympathetic ear, and same goes for my mother and Scraps, but at least we were all being sad together.”

“You—you were thinking of trying to get yourself traded here too?”

“Yeah, Parse.” Jeff’s voice was both sad and amused. “Yeah, I was gonna follow you if I could.”

Jack came back with Kent’s suitcase.

“I gotta go, Jeff, but I’ll call you back when I can, okay?”

“Yeah, okay. Love you.”

“Love you.”

“So this is Vegas print, I take it,” said Jack, indicating Kent’s suitcase, which had a loud pattern of poker chips and playing cards.

“Subtle,” said Kent, smiling a little.

“It really isn’t,” said Jack, but he smiled back and Kent knew he knew what Kent was talking about.

“So, you’re taking me?”

“Is that okay?”

“Yeah, sure.”

They talked logistics and unimportant things for the ride to Jack’s apartment, and Kent was grateful for the opportunity to focus on something other than guilt and sadness and _unfair._

It wasn’t until they walked into the apartment and Kent saw the photograph on the side table that he remembered.

“Does your boyfriend live here? Am I third wheeling?”

“Nah, he’s still in college. He comes down on weekends sometimes. Thankfully I talked him out of living here and commuting to school, it really isn’t close enough for that.”

Jack showed him to the spare room, and Kent unpacked a few essentials before giving up and flopping onto the bed with his computer.

_Skype?_ he texted Jeff.

_Sure,_ came the response, and a minute later, his boyfriend’s face appeared on the screen. He looked a little ragged around the edges, but not as bad as Kent was expecting.

“Your cat misses you,” was the first thing out of Jeff’s mouth.

Kent made a confused noise. “She does?”

“Yeah, she’s wandering around confused as hell. In case you’d forgotten, you idiot, she may see a lot of me and Ozzy, but she _lives_ with _you._ ”

Kent blinked at the screen for a good few seconds. “…That honestly hadn’t occurred to me,” he admitted.

Swoops buried his face in his hands. “Jesus Christ, Parser, get a therapist. Ask Jack, he’s got anxiety, he must have one.”

“How do you know that?” Kent asked, surprised. Jack’s business was Jack’s business, and he’d never told anyone, even Jeff.

“We bonded,” said Jeff dryly. “Over being gay hockey players whose boyfriends could get traded away at a moment’s notice. Or traded away from the boyfriend, for him. And then over knowing and getting invested in the sorry mess that is you.”

“Hey,” protested Kent without much energy.

“Don’t worry, you don’t have competition,” teased Jeff with a small smile. “Ha, I hope he tells his own boyfriend that. Gotta be weird having an ex under the same roof.”

“If he hasn’t already told Bitty I have you, I’ll tell him myself when I meet him. He doesn’t actually live here. I don’t know if that makes it more or less awkward.”

“He doesn’t?” Kent repeated what Jack had told him. Jeff was quiet for a long moment, staring off into space above the webcam.

“Troy? You in there?”

“Shh, having an idea.” Another few seconds, and Jeff jumped into motion with a suddenness that startled Kent. “Ask Jack—no, better idea, ask Georgia—is she friendly with anyone on the Islanders or Rangers. Or the Flyers. Or the Devils.”

Kent jotted down the teams before he forgot them. In the back of his mind he thought he knew where Swoops was going with this, but he didn’t dare let himself think it.

“Jeff?”

“I gotta call my agent. And your agent. Kent—” Jeff looked directly at the camera again. “I _will_ see you soon.”

Kent barely got in a goodbye before Jeff hung up. He stared at Skype for a moment, then called his agent. After he assured her that he didn’t blame her, he warned her to expect another call from Jeff and then hung up and called Georgia Martin as requested.

***

Swoops didn’t get back to him for three days, though Kent got cryptic little texts like _Working on it_ and _Plan’s coming together_. He worked out his frustration in practice, learning how to fit into the Falcs’ lineup and skating endless suicides. 

After three days, Georgia came out of the office and called him off the ice.

“We’re trading Jeff Troy to the New York Rangers,” she said without preamble, and Kent’s eyes grew wide.

“That’s…that’s way closer than Vegas,” he finished lamely, not having any idea how far New York was in miles.

“Way closer,” she agreed, smiling. “We’re leveraging your trading. No one will talk about why you were traded if Aces management cooperates with us on Troy.”

“You’re blackmailing them?”

“I can’t confirm that,” said Georgia, but she was still smiling. “Jeff wanted to break the news, but since you’re out on the ice, you weren’t going to hear it for another few hours, so he got me to do it.”

“God, I love him,” said Kent without thinking. Before he had time to worry, Georgia squeezed his shoulder and left.

“Go on, kid,” said Coach from across the way. “Go call him.” Kent did.

Jeff picked up on the first ring.

"You're coming to New York," said Kent.

"It's not the same team, but it's easily within visiting distance. For us and the cats. And in a year, when things are settled down, maybe the Falcs'll have room."

"A year," breathed Kent. "We can do this for a year."

"Kind of long distance, but with lots of time to crash at each other's places on off days."

"Medium distance."

Jeff laughed. "Yeah, Parser. Medium distance. Medium distance with renegotiation in the future. I don't know about you, but it sounds a hell of a lot better than "here's my cat, take care of her, goodbye" to me."

"Yeah," said Kent. "Yeah. Me too." His voice broke and he pressed his face into the hand not holding the phone.

"I'll see you soon," said Jeff. 

***

The internet never got to see the drama surrounding Kent Parson’s trade to the Falconers and Jeff Troy’s subsequent trade to the Rangers, due mostly to the NDAs everyone ended up signing. Several fans made note that this was the only mention Kent made of it at all.


End file.
